381–390 of 1001 posts
The problem with no religion and no politics is that it’s impossible to draw a line on what is politics or religion. Let’s say you hire a gay employee, there very existence is political. Are they wrong for mentioning that they are gay (no), but to some at the company that may be trying to advance their gay political agenda. Idk what the solution is, but just blanket “No religion/no politics” is just a way to say you…
> Let’s say you hire a gay employee, there very existence is political. It's not, though. I've worked with a lot of gay people, and none have ever brought politics into work. This is just a BS argument by the people who do. There is a legitimate point about where do you draw the line (e.g. is bitching about CA taxes "politics"), but this is not it.
I run a small politics forum. I was able to get down to one rule that seems to work. No ad hominem or insults of any groups, people, or policies. People can talk about why they like things or why things will or wont work. People continually try to work around them and sometimes there are comments that are borderline. Most people are very respectful and libs and conservatives can debate. An example of trying to bypass…
There's a pretty big difference between running a political discussion forum and having those same political discussions at work, though. On a political forum, people's main relationship is coming together to talk politics. They sought that out. At work people's main relationship is to work together. Talking politics becomes messy because it becomes a secondary relationship that can affect the key one, the work one.…
I get that workplaces can become distracted. I think we've all experienced it. I just think that banning "politics" is no replacement for engaged leadership and discernment while navigating a company through the world.
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Depends I will be looking and reaching out to them soon. A) they are now looking for a lot of people. B) I fully agree with their idea about apolitical work spaces, and I know a lot of folks that do as well. I have quit jobs due to the BLM fanfare, you are either with us or against us mentality in the workplace where I just wanted to do my job and get paid to do so. edit: I chose BLM because it was the big thing last…
If I was DHH and Jason I would be extremely wary of any applications coming in right now. When your policies are being celebrated by Breitbart and other alt-right trash publications, you are going to attract a lot of folks with extremely questionable integrity. Not saying you're one of those, but if you can't recognize your point in history and are quitting your job over "BLM fanfare", then you also know the answer t…
That's not true. Being harassed to virtue-signal and not wanting to deal with those people has nothing to do with how likely you are to have your own beliefs and act upon them.
>But if you have the luxury to quit jobs (PLURAL!) over being asked to take a stand, then you're not apolitical.
No that just means that he has enough choice not to want to bother with people requiring you to take their stand. I deplore people who do not have that luxury and have to deal with people radical enough to require others to mirror them.
2. If Apple had teams circulating customer data internally and laughing about it, DHH would be asking for a Congressional investigation.
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Any employer that abruptly told me I needed to watch what I said at work would lose me, too. I'm not saying I demand the ability to be rude and awful, or go on political tirades, or anything even vaguely like that. But I spend more time talking to people I work with than any other set of people. Telling me I have to avoid entire categories of normal conversation is itself authoritarian politicization of the workplace…
> Any employer that abruptly told me I needed to watch what I said at work would lose me, too. You don't already feel this way? There's a long list of things that would have you packing your desk if you discussed them at any other company. Society has already decided certain extreme positions are too brand damaging or disruptive to tolerate. This policy seems to reflect that a not-insignificant portion of the populat…
I have trouble imaging how a response to an apparent social cohesion issue that results in 1/3 of the office immediately walking can be considered a good outcome.
It sounds more like a corporate schism to me.
I'm more or less OK with discussing any topic at non-work time, during lunch or whatever, but only until every participant in a discussion is willing to accept the views he/she personally disagrees with.
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Our experience when we issued our "No Politics / No Religion" policy at work was very positive. The few people who had an issue with it, subsequently quit or were terminated, and many of their co-workers actually thanked us afterwards for it. We didn't have to pay them to leave. One tried to use the company social media accounts to advance her politics, so we fired her, and the other person became frustrated that she…
I've noticed an overlap between activist personalities and attention seeking personalities. Some people, either consciously or subconsciously, enjoy the dopamine hit from anger and confrontation and they will seek it out at work.
I've noticed an overlap between attention seeking personalities and people who get noticed for...well, anything.
But that’s kind of the nature of “attention seeking”.
I have a different take on this, different than most comments here: I think that the founders/owners knew what they were doing based on reading their book and lightly following them. I have never been a customer. I know that I am just guessing, but they might have been making the lifestyle decision that they wanted a smaller and more focused company that was more joyful to manage/run. Also, I have some sympathy for a…
> ...they wanted a smaller and more focused company that was more joyful to manage/run.
I agree with you because the six month severance offer was so generous that it can only mean that they wanted a lot of people to take it. Also, if they found that they were losing too many people, then they would start offering people money NOT to take the severance offer. But that didn't happen. So, I have to conclude that the 1/3 headcount cut is intentional.
edit: I didn't realize this happened so fast. Now I think it may have been a misstep.
What I think is lost in the conversation here is that people don’t really have organizations they can go to to advocate their political positions. People have their families, their jobs, and maybe a couple of friends and that’s about it. They need an outlet to push the ideas and causes they care about. The workplace is one of the few places where they can feel like they’re having an impact, but that’s not really appr…
Why should workplaces serve as political-outlet therapy locations because people can't think of other organizations to use for this purpose? There are, in fact, countless numbers of political organizations and groups in the U.S. and you are free to start your own if you don't like anything on offer. The idea that you a company should cater to your other non-work desires such as baptism or finding a loved one or expressing your personal angst about some topic just because you're there and it's convenient doesn't make much sense. Yes, political activism takes time and you may not have time to go to a meeting after work or on weekends. That doesn't mean you can turn your workplace into a church or other political-therapy group.